We all know scent is the most powerful memory trigger. Your mom's perfume, the smell of hot dogs on a charcoal grill, and the rubber on a hot bicycle tire.
But what happens when you smell a scent that isn't there, that hasn't ever been in the place you are now? A site-specific scent that has only belonged in a certain place, but has somehow traveled to your snout from so far away?
I think my brain is playing tricks on me.
No, I'm not having a stroke. I don't smell burnt toast or fresh cut grass. Well, I did today after I mowed the giant lawn, but all systems are still a go.
What I'm trying to express is that I will be walking, and thinking about Montana, and then these smells whisper up my nostrils and tickle my brain. And they are Montana, and only Montana smells. Olfactory sensations I've only experienced there, and now, here in Washington, they have appeared.
Just a few times, and only when I'm walking and thinking about the move. About going home. And then I smell home.
Is that weird? Does my brain know more, and because the logical part is thinking about a place that it loves, the sensory part is throwing in it's two-cents? Like a gray matter "Hallelujah!"
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| photo by The Huz, who is enjoying a cattle-roundup this weekend. |
Can I get an "Amen"?
Dani
I spent Summers growing up at Lake Arrowhead and the first smell of pine as we were finally high enough after winding our way up the mountain is something I will never forget. But it sometimes catches me by surprise, here where I live on old seabed floor and there are no pines, and for one glorious moment I am swept back to my childhood, 40 years and 600 miles away in a heartbeat, as the smell of pine tingles my brain. Amen!
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